Past Musings

I wrote this over a year ago in response to the Pulse nightclub shooting. However the recent violence in Charlottesville spurred me to repost this article. Furthermore, I was horrified when the man whom occupies the White House defended these cowards and hate mongers on national television. In an angry hate filled press conference he stated there were good people on both sides. He even created a new term Alt Left. What the hell is that? I am fearful for all minorities in our country. The President’s bully pull pit is the largest in the world. He gave license to hate. He co-signed bigotry, xenophobia, racism, anti semitism, sexism, and homophobia. We are in a dark period. I am African American and weep for my children. I weep for the patriots whom gave their lives for freedom. I weep for each slave that shed blood in the fields of the south. I weep for a 14 year old boy named Emmett Till whom was lynched like countless other Blacks in the south. I weep for the death of Heather Hyer and the beating of Deandre Harris. Way too much blood spilled to allow our country to revert back to the days of Bloody Sunday and Bull Harris.

In recent days I began thinking about the word hate and how it turned a peaceful night club in Orlando into another ugly monument to intolerance and stupidity. In Webster’s dictionary hate is defined as intense hostility and aversion usually deriving from fear, anger, or sense of injury. What happened two weeks ago on a festive Sunday night at a popular night spot has become far too common in America and frankly across the world. The definition of hate is powerful alone, but when it’s burned into a person with a severe aversion to anything different due to fear or anger it can lead to the kind of violence we witnessed in Florida. Each and every day citizens go to work and communicate with fellow workers whom may be a racist, severely homophobic, or hold certain political beliefs that can turn him into a terrorist in the time it takes a thought to reach a human brain.

Hate is a virus that enters the human body and removes all rational thought. It cannot allow others to live their lives as free human beings. Hate eradicates what it doesn’t understand. It kills six million Jews, enslaves an entire race, and nearly eliminates a country’s indigenous people and places them on small parcels of land in a nation they once roamed and ruled freely. Hate burns down homes and births filthy words from it’s diseased womb like Nigger, Faggot, Cracker and others that are too many to mention. Hate Kills women and children, sells fathers and mothers away from their progeny. Hate lies behind the eyes of intense bigots whom believe they are doing the world a favor by killing innocents because of their beliefs, religion, sexual orientation, and race. Hate is a crippled being with gory teeth and blood on its hands. Hunched over it sleeps in the souls of human beings behind a locked door that we hope never opens to let the ugly, bug eyed bastard out to destroy what it doesn’t understand. You see hatred obliterates understanding and fills the void with unreasonable fear. You see hate doesn’t need a rational reason to pull the trigger on an assault rifle and splatter walls with the blood of blameless individuals. The only fuel it needs is an unreasonable anger that can only manifest itself in violence.

Across countless cities in the United States we are bombarded with how gun violence in Chicago, New Orleans, and other major cities are killing young men of color in alarming amounts. Chicago is a prime example of violence speeding into what seems to be almost genocidal. I believe this is fueled by hatred. Hatred of who you are leads to having no remorse for killing someone that looks like you. I am not saying that Caucasians don’t kill each other, but there is a problem when the news in major cities is filled with black and brown faces that have been killed usually by another black or brown face. It’s hate fueled by anger over a certain block, drugs, gang rivalry , or anything that leads to that sense of injury. Hate hangs like dirty fruit on a diseased tree. No matter what the tree only produces poison that kills minds, bodies, and souls.

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.” This quote is by one of our greatest slayers of hate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In our world we need more light to drive out the darkness in human souls and replace the hate with love. Do we need better gun control laws? Yes we do, but only to make it more difficult for a felon, potential terrorist, or deranged individual to purchase a gun to murder innocents. However, I honestly believe that if a criminal wants a gun he/she will find one. It’s our capacity for violence and our willingness to kill our fellow man that is the problem. Until we figure out how to respect other’s way of life and beliefs we will see continued violence in our world and communities. I hope we figure it out and one day we live in a world of peace.